Several Palestinians were kidnapped by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) at daybreak Wednesday in assaults launched across the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The Israeli army claimed responsibility for the abduction of 16 Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Reporting from the southern West Bank province of al-Khalil, a PIC news correspondent said at predawn the IOF rummaged into ex-prisoners’ homes and summoned a number of civilians to questioning.

Palestinian youth Shadi al-Atrash was kidnapped by the IOF from Abu Esneineh neighborhood, in southern al-Khalil, and dragged to an unidentified location.

The Israeli troops also broke into the homes of the Palestinian ex-prisoners Saad al-Qawasma, Abdul Karim al-Qawasma, and Mohamed Abeid.

At the same time, the IOF stormed the house of Palestinian citizen Abdul Ghani Taha and kidnapped his 18-year-old son, Alaa.

Meanwhile, Israeli army jeeps and troop-carriers rolled into the northern occupied West Bank province of Nablus at 2 a.m. and wreaked havoc on civilian homes in Balata al-Balad, to the east, before they kidnapped Thaer Issawi, 24, and Youssef Dweikat, 20.

Red Crescent paramedics rushed a Palestinian youth to a hospital so as to be urgently treated for rubber bullet injuries sustained in his leg during clashes that burst out in Nablus between the occupation army and the anti-occupation youth.

The IOF also stormed Tulkarem’s northern town of Balaa, in the northern West Bank, and cracked down on Palestinian civilians. A series of makeshift checkpoints was randomly pitched across the area.

The occupation soldiers broke into the home of the wanted Palestinian Mahdi Mer’i and kidnapped his father and brothers as a means to force Mer’i to turn himself in.

In the meantime, Palestinian young man Ashraf Awda, from Azzoun town, east of Qalqilya, turned himself in to the occupation army following threats to arrest his father and brother.

One day earlier, the IOF stormed Awda’s family home and detained his brother for hours.

22-year-old university student Ahmad Ezzedine Amarna, from Jenin’s southwestern town of Yabad, was also kidnapped by the IOF at a military checkpoint pitched on Nablus-Tulkarem road. The arrestee is the son of the Hamas leader Ezzedine Amarna.

The IOF further kidnapped a Palestinian youth from Tubas and another from Bethlehem.

The campaign culminated in the abduction of Nour Areikat from his home in Abu Dis town, in east Occupied Jerusalem.